As world leaders embark upon yet one more COP climate conferenceit might be easy to be cynical, afraid or overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the impacts that climate change is having (and can proceed to have), upon our world.
After all, the realities of rising sea levels and more frequent and severe storms are scary prospects.
However, together with the bad, it’s also essential to acknowledge the great, resembling the recent missive from the International Energy Agency indicating that we’d still give you the option to limit global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius attributable to record growth in green technologies.
Why should we care about excellent news in a world so clearly doomed? Do these not distract us from more pressing matters? Simply put, a scarcity of fine news is bad for our health and causes many to assume all is lost, making a self-fulfilling prophecy which hinders effective climate motion.
A dark world?
Journalist David Wallace-Wells opens his bookwith the road “It’s worse, much worse than you think that.” This sentiment typifies the constant food regimen of bad news which over the past a long time has instilled fear and anxiety inside a terrific proportion of society, especially the young.
It is manifested as eco-anxiety and explains why in a recent survey of 10,000 youth and kids across the globe, 75 per cent of the respondents thought the long run was frightening with over half feeling helpless or powerless. One in 4 of those respondents are hesitant to have children for fear of bringing a baby right into a threatening or doomed world.
If we add to those sentiments research showing that trust in institutions globally has decreased over the past years then the image seems even bleaker. However, a 2019 Pew poll within the United States suggested that 71 per cent of respondents also have a decline in interpersonal trust.
This reality echoes the symptom of distress that professor of communications George Gerbner coined within the Nineteen Seventies as “mean world syndrome.” Such a state views violence and self-centredness as being imbedded in society which, not surprisingly, results in increased fear and mistrust concerning the world and the long run. This scenario is cause for concern for 2 necessary reasons.
First, while some level of fear can spur motion it might also result in eco-paralysis. Eco-paralysis is the hyper anxiety that may leave people feeling hopeless and without agency, sentiments likely felt above by the ten,000 youth.
Such fear could cause greater than apathy, as Gerbner warned way back. It may also leave individuals feeling, as he says, “more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more prone to deceptively easy, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures…[who]…may welcome repression if it guarantees to alleviate their insecurities.”
(AP Photo/Noah Berger)
An authoritarian world won’t be the reply to our climate crisis, for it’s precisely civil society that spurs healthy change.
The second reason for concern over this bleak representation of the world is that such an outline shouldn’t be accurate. Yes, it’s true — to proceed the instance above — that worldwide democracy has eroded in lots of instances, which shouldn’t be conducive to a just transition to a post-fossil-fuel world. But democracy has also shown some remarkable successes with regard to civil liberties and political participation in countries like South Africa, Indonesia and various other states resembling Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Namibia, Mauritius, and Senegal.
These instances should remind us that our negative perceptions of a “mean world” will not be all the time founded, which may foster hope, something we dearly need.
Negative preconceptions
Howard Frumkin, professor emeritus of Washington University School of Public Health, reminds us that hope is central to human flourishing. Hope, nevertheless, shouldn’t be a simple notion to know.
Frumkin conceives hope as a perception that we have now agency or, more simply, the sensation that we’re able to taking motion. Add to this psychological research showing that agency may be learned, even emboldened, from watching others, and we are able to see why environmental thinker David Orr defines hope as “a verb with its sleeves rolled up.”
What this tells us is that if we’re to deal with climate change, we’ll need to listen to and witness the myriad stories of people and groups who, with agency, are actively pursuing sustainable futures.
Take the work of Project Drawdowna non-profit organization that uses science-based climate strategies to stop and even reverse climate change. Its findings are noteworthy: chief among the many strategies to deal with climate change is ensuring that girls across the globe receive an education.
Project Drawdown’s research shows that with more education girls usually tend to manage their reproductive health, realize higher wages, have fewer incidences of disease and contribute positively to the nutrition of their families. All outcomes which have clear societal, individual and environmental advantages.
Looking at public perceptions of the state of ladies’ education across the globe reveals a vital phenomenon: people doubt such a goal is possible. A 2018 study consisting of hundreds of surveys across the globe found that when asked “In all low-income countries the world over today, how many women finish primary school?” most individuals responded only 20 per cent, when in fact, 60 per cent do.
Simply put, our beliefs on the education of ladies will not be only negative but perilously mistaken and this inability to conceive of the goal being possible presents one other barrier to effective motion on addressing global problems. From girls’ education to climate change, negative perceptions of futility and impossibility have serious consequences.
Staying hopeful
Stating the excellent news doesn’t mean we deny the bad. The trick in stating the excellent news shouldn’t be in ignoring the darker realities of our time, for instance, by pitching naïve or ideological optimism which some think tanks or populist leaders would favor us to embrace. Such considering only delays motion and maintains a business-as-usual approach to climate change.
We need, as an alternative, to think dialectically. Dialectical considering has us hold on to seemingly opposite realities concurrently, resembling the reality of still-too-few girls receiving education and that already 60 per cent of ladies in low-income countries today are completing primary school with many working to make that number much higher. Or that there may be positive climate news in a world on fire.
The hope we want today is dark, to make sure. It acknowledges the tragic realities of our time also seeks out, learns from, and champions its successes. It is an energetic hope upheld by the conviction that reality may be paradoxical, each good and bad.
Engaging within the act of hope can assist us develop into less terrified concerning the future and more assured in our belief that it is feasible to construct a greater, and more just, world. We would all do well to recollect this if, or indeed when, our leaders disappoint us at COP28.